In general, the purpose of a communication system is to transmit information-bearing signals from a source, located at one point, to a user destination, located at another point some distance away. A communication system generally consists of three basic components: transmitter, channel, and receiver. The transmitter has the function of processing the message signal into a form suitable for transmission over the channel. This processing of the message signal is referred to as modulation. The function of the channel is to provide a physical connection between the transmitter output and the receiver input. The function of the receiver is to process the received signal so as to produce an estimate of the original message signal. This processing of the received signal is referred to as demodulation.
Two types of channels exist, namely, point-to point channels and broadcast channels. Examples of point-to-point channels include wirelines (e.g., local telephone transmission), microwave links, and optical fibers. In contrast, broadcast channels provide a capability where many receiving stations may be reached simultaneously from a single transmitter (e.g. local television and radio stations).
Analog and digital transmission methods are used to transmit a message signal over a communication channel. The use of digital methods offers several operational advantages over analog methods, including but not limited to: increased immunity to channel noise and interference, flexible operation of the system, common format for the transmission of different kinds of message signals, and improved security of communication through the use of encryption.
These advantages are attained at the cost of increased transmission (channel) bandwidth and increased system complexity. Through the use of very large-scale integration (VLSI) technology a cost-effective way of building the hardware has been developed.
One digital transmission method that may be used for the transmission of message signals over a communication channel is pulse-code modulation (PCM). In PCM, the message signal is sampled, quantized, and then encoded. The sampling operation permits representation of the message signal by a sequence of samples taken at uniformly spaced instants of time. Quantization trims the amplitude of each sample to the nearest value selected from a finite set of representation levels. The combination of sampling and quantization permits the use of a code (e.g., binary code) for the transmission of a message signal. Other forms of digital transmission use similar methods to transmit message signals over a communication channel.
When message signals are digitally transmitted over a band-limited channel, a form of interference known as intersymbol interference may result. The effect of intersymbol interference, if left uncontrolled, is to severely limit the rate at which digital data may be transmitted without error over the channel. The cure for controlling the effects of intersymbol interference may be controlled by carefully shaping the transmitted pulse representing a binary symbol 1 or 0.
Further, to transmit a message signal (either analog or digital) over a band-pass communication channel, the message signal must be manipulated into a form suitable for efficient transmission over the channel. Modification of the message signal is achieved by means of a process termed modulation. This process involves varying some parameter of a carrier wave in accordance with the message signal in such a way that the spectrum of the modulated wave matches the assigned channel bandwidth. Correspondingly, the receiver is required to re-create the original message signal from a degraded version of the transmitted signal after propagation through the channel. The re-creation is accomplished by using a process known as demodulation, which is the inverse of the modulation process used in the transmitter.
In addition to providing efficient transmission, there are other reasons for performing modulation. In particular, the use of modulation permits multiplexing, that is, the simultaneous transmission of signals from several message sources over a common channel. Also, modulation may be used to convert the message signal into a form less susceptible to noise and interference.
Typically, in propagating through a channel, the transmitted signal is distorted because of nonlinearities and imperfections in the frequency response of the channel. Other sources of degradation are noise and interference picked up by the signal during the course of transmission through the channel. Noise and distortion constitute two basic limitations in the design of communication systems.
There are various sources of noise, internal as well as external to the system. Although noise is random in nature, it may be described in terms of its statistical properties such as the average power or the spectral distribution of the average power.
In any communication system, there are two primary communication resources to be employed, namely, average transmitted power and channel bandwidth. The average transmitted power is the average power of the transmitted signal. The channel bandwidth defines the range of frequencies that the channel can handle for the transmission of signals with satisfactory fidelity. A general system design objective is to use these two resources as efficiently as possible. In most channels, one resource may be considered more important than the other. Hence, we may also classify communication channels as power-limited or band-limited. For example, the telephone circuit is a typical band-limited channel, whereas a deep-space communication link or a satellite channel is typically power-limited.
The transmitted power is important because, for a receiver of prescribed noise figure, it determines the allowable separation between the transmitter and receiver. In other words, for a receiver of prescribed noise figure and a prescribed distance between it and the transmitter, the available transmitted power determines the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver input. This, subsequently, determines the noise performance of the receiver. Unless performance exceeds a certain design level, the transmission of message signals over the channel is not considered to be satisfactory.
Additionally, channel bandwidth is important because, for a prescribed band of frequencies characterizing a message signal, the channel bandwidth determines the number of such message signals that can be multiplexed over the channel. In other words, for a prescribed number of independent message signals that have to share a common channel, the channel bandwidth determines the band of frequencies that may be allotted to the transmission of each message signal without discernible distortion.
For spread spectrum communication systems, these areas of concern have been optimized in one particular manner. In spread spectrum systems, a modulation technique is utilized in which a transmitted signal is spread over a wide frequency band. The frequency band is much wider than the minimum bandwidth required to transmit the information being sent. A voice signal, for example, can be sent with amplitude modulation (AM) in a bandwidth only twice that of the information itself. Other forms of modulation, such as low deviation frequency modulation (FM) or single sideband AM, also permit information to be transmitted in a bandwidth comparable to the bandwidth of the information itself. A spread spectrum system, on the other hand, often takes a baseband signal (e.g., a voice channel) with a bandwidth of only a few kilohertz, and distributes it over a band that may be many megahertz wide. This is accomplished by modulating with the information to be sent and with a wideband encoding signal. Through the use of spread spectrum modulation, a message signal may be transmitted in a channel in which the noise power is higher than the signal power. The modulation and demodulation of the message signal provides a signal-to-noise gain which enables the recovery of the message signal from a noisy channel. The greater the signal-to-noise ratio for a given system equates to: (1) the smaller the bandwidth required to transmit a message signal with a low rate of error or (2) the lower the average transmitted power required to transmit a message signal with a low rate of error over a given bandwidth.
Three general types of spread spectrum communication techniques exist, including:
The modulation of a carrier by a digital code sequence whose bit rate is much higher than the information signal bandwidth. Such systems are referred to as "direct sequence" modulated systems.
Carrier frequency shifting in discrete increments in a pattern dictated by a code sequence. These systems are called "frequency hoppers". The transmitter jumps from frequency to frequency within some predetermined set; the order of frequency usage is determined by a code sequence. Similarly "time hopping" and "time-frequency hopping" have times of transmission which are regulated by a code sequence.
Pulse-FM or "chirp" modulation in which a carrier is swept over a wide band during a given pulse interval.
Information (i.e. the message signal) can be embedded in the spectrum signal by several methods. One method is to add the information to the spreading code before it is used for spreading modulation. This technique can be used in direct sequence and frequency hopping systems. It will be noted that the information being sent must be in a digital form prior to adding it to the spreading code, because the combination of the spreading code, typically a binary code, involves module-2 addition. Alternatively, the information or message signal may be used to modulate a carrier before spreading it.
Thus, a spread spectrum system must have two properties: (1) the transmitted bandwidth should be much greater than the bandwidth or rate of the information being sent, and (2) some function other than the information being sent is employed to determine the resulting modulated channel bandwidth.
The essence of the spread spectrum communication involves the art of expanding the bandwidth of a signal, transmitting the expanded signal and recovering the desired signal by remapping the received spread spectrum into the original information bandwidth. Furthermore, in the process of carrying out this series of bandwidth trades, the purpose of spread spectrum techniques is to allow the system to deliver error-free information in a noisy signal environment.
The present invention enhances the ability of spread-spectrum systems and, in particular, code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular radio-telephone systems to recover spread spectrum signals from a noisy radio communication channel. In CDMA cellular radio-telephone systems, the "users" are on the same frequency and separated only by unique user codes. The noise interference level in the communication channel is directly related to the interference level created by the users and not by additive Gaussian noise like in other communication systems. Thus, the number of users that can simultaneously use the same frequency band in a given cellular region is limited by the code noise of all active "users". The present invention reduces the effects of undesired user code noise and thus significantly increases the number of users which can simultaneously be serviced by a given cellular region.